IT may have come as a shock to President Goodluck Jonathan that the Niger Delta Development Commission has not been delivering on its mandate, but many others are not in the least surprised. Worried by its high rate of uncompleted projects, Jonathan in December ordered the commission to stop awarding new contracts until the completion of all the abandoned ones. He gave the directive while inaugurating the new Bassey Ewa-Henshaw-led NDDC board.
But the move can only be meaningful if Jonathan walks his talk, for talk is cheap, but action, weighty. Too often in the past, the President had noted such anomalies in governance without following through on how to complete such projects. The effects of the Federal Government’s 11,886 projects valued at N7.7 trillion abandoned after contractors had collected N2.6 trillion mobilisation funds are dispiritingly clear.
However, the President’s directive is a poignant reminder of how the organisation, which was set up by the NDDC Act (2000) No. 6, has lost so much ground in fulfilling its mandate. Established with the “mission of facilitating the rapid, even and sustainable development of the Niger Delta…,” the commission has been anything but up and doing. Instead of carrying out its mandate of alleviating the grave conditions in the nine oil-producing states of the region, the NDDC, just like its precursor – Oil Mineral Producing Areas Development Commission – has scored dismally in its performance ratings. “If you aggregate the total amount of money the Federal Government has spent on [the ] agency,” the President lamented, “[it] is enormous and I don’t believe, on the ground, that we have something to show (for it) very clearly.” Today, the agency is defined by corruption on a large scale.
Jonathan is not alone in bemoaning the NDDC’s performance. Senate President, David Mark, once lamented that the agency had performed below expectation. Its breathtaking incompetence and unconscionable waste are captured in media reports stating that the projects abandoned by the commission over the years will cost N1.4 trillion to complete. Contrary to the claim that it has taken giant strides to facilitate the all-round development of the Niger Delta region and its people, Jonathan reportedly queried the commission for abandoning 285 projects. An enquiry discovered that the projects were abandoned between 2005 and 2011, with other anomalies headlining the report. One of those incongruities is the discovery that the NDDC management awarded a contract for the renovation of a privately-owned club in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital.
With an annual average budget of N250 billion since 2010 (and an average of about N100 billion annually from inception), the commission has made a very poor return on the investment poured into it. The NDDC has become notorious for shoddy and late budget preparations. For example, it presented its N316 billion 2013 budget to the National Assembly only last November. Worse, the budget is for only eight months. In September 2012, when it presented its 2012 budget of N250 billion to the Senate, parliamentarians castigated it for lateness. To show the self-serving nature of the NDDC management, the office of one of its former managing directors received a budgetary vote of N529.2 million for 2010, while one former chairman of the agency allegedly paid out more than N800 million to a native doctor in a fetish deal.
While the performance of the NDDC is highly condemnable and cannot be excused, given the role it is expected to play in addressing the long years of neglect in the nine states under its purview, it is instructive to note that the failure is part of a wider national malaise of incompetence and plunder. The Presidency and the parliament are as well guilty of this negligence, which shouldn’t be, considering the infrastructure deficit plaguing the region. But the interventionist agency’s depressing scorecard depicts a larger national malaise.
The presidential embargo on new contracts should be observed. But a bolder and more imaginative action will be to review the NDDC’s 15-year Regional Development Master Plan to make it more compact. It serves no useful purpose to make the commission another level of government with a very wide mandate. For the Niger Delta people to feel the impact of the commission, the President has to rework the management structure of the organisation. The shambolic culture of using the NDDC board to dispense favour to party members must stop. He must bring in quality hands on board as interventionist agencies all over the world have a lifespan. The NDDC must have a definite lifespan; it was never planned as a permanent agency.
Many of such agencies in Nigeria have failed because of poor monitoring. The National Assembly committees on the NDDC have failed in their oversight duty too and should, therefore, feel ashamed. But the parliament can redeem itself by initiating fresh legislation to ensure that the commission delivers on its mandate of providing quality infrastructure for the people of the Niger Delta region.
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